


The Long Trip Back

by randi2204



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: 3K Round-up Challenge, Angst, Blood and Injury, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Medical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 12:20:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7976623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randi2204/pseuds/randi2204
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're on the trail of a bank robber, but they don't know the bank robber has them in his sights until one of them is injured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Trip Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SivanShemesh (Sivan325)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sivan325/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** The cowboys belong to MGM, Mirisch, and Trilogy, not me, woe.
> 
> **Notes:** Be aware that there is period medical treatment going on, as well as possible medical inaccuracies on the part of the author.

Chris’s only warning had been Ezra’s call, mere seconds before the crack of the gun.  “Nathan!”

 

He pivoted and saw the man they’d been tracking – Bob Culver, a former army scout now wanted for bank robbery and a host of other crimes besides – some yards away, just visible where he’d risen to take his shot.  Culver didn’t see him or Vin; he was looking toward the camp, maybe didn’t realize that he and Vin had circled around to find Culver’s own trail.  Quickly, Chris took aim and fired, echoed by the louder bark of Vin’s gun.  Culver jerked as the bullets slammed into him, and fell into the dirt, unmoving.

 

Culver was a wily old fox who’d nearly gotten the drop on them, not to mention how he’d gotten away from them in town, so Chris took caution in his approach to determine if the man was dead, dying or just wounded.  The soft crunch of dirt just to his right told him that Vin was backing him up again, just as he always did.

 

But the man was dead; the bullets had struck him in the chest.  His mouth was pulled in a grin as he lay staring sightlessly up at the sky, and Chris felt a shiver run down his spine at the sight.  _There was a time I’d have been so glad to die,_ he thought.

 

“Reckon we’d better find his horse,” Vin commented, nudging the body with the toe of his boot.  “Haul him back to town.”

 

“Yeah.”  Chris holstered his gun.  “See if you can find it.  I’ll send JD and Josiah to give you a hand.”

 

“All right.”  Vin squatted to study the ground by Culver’s body.

 

But when Chris returned to their camp, everything was chaos, and his chest tightened painfully when he heard Nathan’s voice, sharp and worried, barking orders to Josiah and Buck… and above that, Ezra crying out.  He pushed past JD where he stood, white and drawn.  Nathan knelt next to Ezra, hands pressed against his side where the blood pumped out, coating his fingers, soaked into his shirt.   Buck poked viciously at the embers of their campfire, trying to bring it back to life, while Josiah had already fetched Nathan’s bag from his horse.

 

“Stay still, Ezra,” Nathan commanded.  “Gotta get that bullet out of your foolish self… Josiah, need my surgery tools, they’re rolled up in leather.  Gonna need the water hot as you can get it, Buck, need it boilin’.”

 

_What happened?_ Chris wanted to ask, but the words were caught in his throat.  The amount of blood pouring from Ezra’s side was worrying – no, it was downright _frightening_.  This was so much worse than that time in town, because this time there had been no money in the lining of Ezra’s coat, nothing to stop the bullet from doing him serious injury.

 

_Nothing to stop it from killing him_. The thought came unbidden and Chris shivered with a sudden chill.

 

But it freed him to move again; he knelt down by Ezra and Nathan, laid a hand on Ezra’s forehead, clammy now with sweat.  “Be still, Ezra,” he said quietly, willing his voice not to shake.  “Let Nathan get the bullet out.”

 

Ezra gazed up at him, eyes glazed with pain, the centers so big that the green was only a thin ring.  “Ah’m... tryin’…” he managed, but he couldn’t even give a ghost of his usual gold-tinted grin.

 

“Try harder,” Nathan grunted.  “Chris, need you to press here.” He grabbed Chris’s free hand, leaving bloody smears where his fingers brushed the sleeve of Chris’s coat.  “Press hard, don’t let up.  Gotta make sure these are clean.”  He scrambled away, instruments in hand.

 

Chris swallowed at the feel of Ezra’s blood flowing over his fingers, slick and warm.  It made bile rise in his throat.  Distantly he could hear Nathan and Buck talking, could feel JD watching them.  “JD,” he called over his shoulder.  “JD, go help Vin.”

 

“But I… I can help, Chris!” JD said, voice trembling.  “I ain’t a kid, I…”

 

“I know, JD!” Chris retorted sharply.  He leaned harder against the wound, trying to keep Ezra from bleeding to death right in front of him.  Ezra shuddered, groaning, and sucked in a harsh breath, and for a moment that took up all his attention.  _Stay with me, Ezra,_ he thought, wiling Ezra to hear him, though he couldn’t say the words aloud. 

 

Ezra stared up at him, pale, eyes wide, and all he could read in Ezra’s face was pain and fear.

 

Chris forced himself to take a breath.  “Go give Vin a hand, JD,” he said tightly.  “He’s lookin’ for Culver’s horse.”

 

Apparently his tone brooked no further argument; he heard JD’s retreat crunching over the bone-dry ground.  Then Nathan was back, his instruments in hand, Josiah behind him.  “Need your flask, Ezra,” he said.  “Gonna need that liquor to clean your wound.”

 

“Saddlebag.”  Chris and Ezra spoke at the same moment, Ezra’s gasp nearly drowned out by Chris’s response.  Chris didn’t look at either Nathan or Josiah, just kept pressing against the hole in Ezra’s side like Nathan had told him.  Those heavy pounding footsteps were Josiah hurrying across to paw through Ezra’s saddlebags.

 

Then Nathan’s hands were there, gently moving his aside to peel Ezra’s blood-soaked shirt away from his skin with a sickening squelching sound.  “Gotta cut this away, so you hold still,” he ordered.  He took a knife from his equipment

 

“Don’t… ruin… my shirt,” Ezra panted at the first sound of rending fabric.

 

“The shirt’s ruined anyway, Ezra,” Chris retorted, his voice too harsh, but Ezra’s blood coated his hands, and Ezra’s face was so white that he couldn’t stop himself.

 

Nathan shot him a sharp look, but kept cutting the shirt away, revealing the wound.  Chris swallowed again at the sight of blood so very red against Ezra’s pale side, but the bile rose back up.

 

“Here.”  Something white dangled in Chris’s vision, and he glanced up to find Josiah holding a piece of damp cloth out to him.  His blue eyes were worried, but somehow he still managed to radiate calm.  “Wipe your hands.  We might need you to help hold him down.”

 

Without thinking, Chris took the cloth, scrubbed it over his hands.  Even afterward, after he’d smeared the cloth all over with red, his fingers felt tacky with the residue of blood.

 

Nathan had pressed a wad of cloth against Ezra’s side to soak up some of the blood, and now pulled it away to pick up his forceps and probe.  “Josiah, get his feet,” he ordered, his attention focused on Ezra’s wound.  “Chris, you get his arms, pull ‘em up over his head.  Can’t have him thrashin’ around.”

 

“C’mon, Ezra,” Chris said, taking hold of Ezra’s arms and doing as Nathan had directed.  Ezra scuffled weakly in the dirt, his hand grabbing Chris’s wrist in a loose grip.  “Yeah,” he said as quietly as he could, and snuck one hand away from holding down Ezra’s arms to brush his white cheek.  “I know it hurts.  Just lay still, all right?”

 

“Chris,” Ezra managed, then gasped as the probe entered his wound, his body arching to get away from the pain.  Josiah grabbed hold of his legs, then lay across them with his whole weight.

 

“Hold still,” Nathan barked.  “Can’t get that damn bullet out if you’re movin’ all around!  Buck, need you to help here…”

 

Chris wanted to say something, to order Ezra to lay still again and let Nathan work, but he just couldn’t.  Something made his tongue heavy in his mouth, made all the words pile up in his throat.  All he could do was brush his thumb along Ezra’s arm when he held it to keep him from moving and hope that Ezra understood.

 

His gaze was so intent on Ezra’s face that he hardly noticed when Buck joined them, hardly felt that gaze on him that knew him so well.  He couldn’t even murmur any reassurance that Ezra would be all right; he’d seen men die from wounds less serious than this.  Even with Nathan looking after him, there was no guarantee Ezra wouldn’t die.

 

It shook him to even _think_ that when he’d been avoiding thinking of it all this time… ever since that morning after the night he’d first tumbled into Ezra’s bed.  But he couldn’t avoid thinking about it – about the possibility one of them might die – now, not when Ezra was so close…

 

Suddenly Ezra went limp under his hands.  He tightened his grip, as if that was the only thing that would keep Ezra alive.

 

“He just passed out,” Nathan grunted, still digging with his probe and forceps.  “Damn fool, gettin’ yaself shot… there!”  He pulled the slug out and held it for a moment in the forceps before dropping it into the dirt.  “Give me Ezra’s flask,” he ordered, holding his hand out to Josiah. Carefully he poured the whiskey over the hole in Ezra’s side; even unconscious, Ezra flinched at the sting.

 

The wound was still bleeding, but more slowly now, and Nathan nodded.  “Good sign,” he muttered, more to himself than the others.  He dampened another cloth with some more of the whiskey and wiped at the wound again, cleaning away the blood as soon as it welled up.

 

Buck straightened away from where he’d been holding Ezra down, looking as pale as Chris felt.  “G’wan back, get that cloth boiled,” Nathan ordered absently.  “Need it for bandages.”

 

Slowly, Chris pulled his hands from Ezra’s arms, because there was nothing he wanted to do _less_ at that moment than let Ezra go.  “What happened?” he demanded, voice low.

 

There was the slightest of pauses as Nathan tended to Ezra’s injury.  “Didn’t know Culver had his sights on me,” he said at last.  “Ezra was up on the rock, had a better view.  Jumped down to knock me out of the way.”  When he looked up, his guilt was plain to see, etched across his face.  “Bad luck he caught the bullet.”

 

Chris glanced down at Ezra’s pale face, wanted so to touch him again, even if just to smooth the ruffled mess of his hair, wipe the sweat away where it had sprung up on his brow.  But his hands were covered with dirt now as well as blood, and what Nathan had just told him made his stomach roil.  “You were lucky he was watchin’,” he forced out somehow, then clenched his teeth tight against the words that would have followed – harsh admonitions to be more careful in the future, dire threats as to what would happen if Ezra died.  _Nathan don’t need me to remind him of any of that,_ Chris thought.

 

“Yeah,” Nathan agreed softly.  “Just wish I’d been payin’ attention my own self.”

 

Shame rose up in his chest at the heavy guilt in Nathan’s words.  It hadn’t been his intention, but at the same time, it had been, part of a savage need to hurt as much as he hurt, as much as Ezra hurt.

 

Instead of dwelling on it, Chris pushed himself stiffly to his feet and made his way to the reason why they’d chosen this spot to camp for the night – the narrow trickle of water that just barely flowed over the hard rocks of its bed.  He stuck his hands into the cold water, watched it swirl over his skin and carry away Ezra’s blood.  When he could stand the chill no longer, he pulled them out and scrubbed them against his pants to warm them.

 

The cold had just stopped burning into his fingers when Vin and JD returned, a vaguely familiar horse plodding along between them.  Something was trussed up in a tattered-looking blanket and slung over the saddle, and it took a moment for Chris to realize that it was Culver’s horse, Culver’s body in the blanket.

 

Vin tossed the horse’s reins to JD and strode to intercept Chris.  “JD said it was bad,” he opened without preamble, falling into step beside Chris.

 

“Deep in his side,” Chris replied tersely, stooping to gather up first his bedroll, then Ezra’s.  “Nathan got it out,” he added, because Nathan was still working on Ezra, but bandaging him up now.

 

Vin nodded.  “Best we hurry, then.”  Without another word, he rolled up his own blankets and slung them and his saddlebags over his shoulder.

 

Chris let out a breath.  All they had to do now was get back to town before Culver’s partners in the bank robbery decided that there were more of them than him, before Ezra bled to death.

 

He got his horse saddled, and Ezra’s, aware of the others doing the same and gathering their things but not really paying them any attention.

 

Ezra wasn’t awake when Chris led their horses over, and only gained consciousness enough for Chris and Nathan to boost him onto his horse.  He slumped in the saddle, listing slightly to one side; Chris swung up and reached across to steady him before glancing down at Nathan. 

 

“Just gotta get him back to town,” Nathan said, brows drawn together.  “For now, that’s all we can do.  Rest is up to him.”

 

Chris felt his mouth twist into a grimace, even as he urged his horse toward the stream and home.  There was nothing he could do, nothing he could have done save what he _had_ done, but the belief that he could have done something _more_ would not be stilled.

 

_Just gotta get back to town,_ he thought, dividing his attention between keeping Ezra upright and navigating the trail.  _We’re all alive; the only one rolled up in his blanket is the man we came to get._   He wouldn’t let himself think about Ezra rolled up in his blanket and slung over his horse, couldn’t let himself think about it.  The others fell in around them, Nathan coming up on Ezra’s other side, Vin still leading Culver’s horse.  Nobody said anything; when he twisted around, Chris saw JD staring at Ezra’s back and biting his lip.

 

It was going to be a long trip back.

 

***

October 16, 2015

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [mag7daybook](http://mag7daybook.dreamwidth.org/) prompt [Chris/Ezra, OW, Ezra been shot by saving Nathan, how Chris will handle...](http://mag7daybook.dreamwidth.org/290724.html?thread=2825892#cmt2825892)


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